The present invention generally relates to clinical information systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods for user-configurable range settings in clinical information systems.
In current healthcare/clinical information systems, healthcare providers may receive lab results or other information pertaining to a patient electronically. A healthcare provider may then review the results to identify abnormal values. In some systems, industry-accepted clinically “normal” values or ranges are used to identify lab results that may need to be brought to the healthcare provider's attention. If a result is out of range, the system alerts the clinician. That is, if a value has fallen outside the normal range for the lab result, the healthcare provider is alerted.
However, many patients may routinely have values that fall outside of the accepted norm. This may be due to a chronic condition, for example. Current systems will flag these values as abnormal, even though they may have become normal for the particular patient. As a result, current systems are ineffective, and even distracting, for the healthcare provider for this particular patient because the healthcare provider will come to ignore the alerts from the system.
For example, the clinically-accepted fasting normal glucose reference range is 70-110 mg/dL. A diabetic patient, however, may consistently have glucose levels of 125 or higher. While this value falls out of the accepted normal range, most clinicians would find a value of 130 for this patient to be unremarkable because of his chronic diabetes. However, a value of 200 would warrant concern and the healthcare provider would desire to be alerted. With current systems, the healthcare provider would receive an alert for both values, even though the value of 130 would be unremarkable for this particular patient.
Current systems do not allow the configuration of a custom range for an individual patient or for a patient population. Thus, there exists a need for systems and methods for user-configurable range settings in clinical information systems.